hereafter

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English herafter,^[2][3] inherited from Old English hēræfter,^{[4][5][3][6][7]} formed from Old English hēr (“here”) + æfter (“after”), the ancestors of here and after.^[4][8][9] The OED compares Danish herefter and Swedish härefter.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

After this in a piece of writing or in order; below: in the Old English translation of Bede's Ecclesiastical History.^[4] Bosworth-Toller quotes the Bede for "as we shall say again hereafter".^[7] Etymonline gives the Old English sense as "in the future; later on".^[8]

Semantic evolution

The temporal sense, "at some future time", is recorded from 1154, in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.^[4] In Middle English the word also meant "after death, in the next life",^[2][8] and "from now on, henceforth";^[2] Chaucer used it twelve times and Gower sixteen.^[10] Trench noted that the word normally looks to a future separated from the present by some interval, but that Elizabethan writers often used it for "from this time forth", as in the Authorized Version of John 1:51 and in Macbeth.^[11] As a noun it meant "time to come, the future" from 1546, in Heywood,^[4][3][8] and "a future life, the world to come" from 1702, in Rowe's Tamerlane;^[4][8] this is now the main sense of the noun, usually the hereafter.^[12][3] A Shakespearean adjective, "future", is now rare or archaic.^[4][3]

Timeline

• Old English – after this in a text or in order.^[4][7]
• 1154 – at a future time, later on.^[4]
• 14th century – after death, in the next life.^[8][2]
• 1546 – noun, time to come, the future.^[4][3]
• 1591 – adjective, future (now archaic).^[3] The OED's first quotation is from Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 1.^[4]
• 1618 – in a future state, in the world to come.^[4]
• 1702 – noun, a future life, the world to come.^[4][8]

Meanings

Adverb

1. (formal) After this in a document, text or order: the party hereafter called the tenant.^[12][3][4]
2. From now on; henceforth.^[12][2]
3. At some time in the future.^[12][3][4]
4. In a future life, after death.^[12][3][4]

Noun

1. the hereafter: life after death; the next world.^[12][3][4]
2. The future; time to come.^[12][3][4]

Adjective

1. (archaic) Future, to come.^[3][4]

Related words

• here
• after
• hereinafter
• thereafter

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ a b c Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
8. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
9. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
10. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
11. ^ Trench, Richard Chenevix (1859), A Select Glossary of English Words Used Formerly in Senses Different from Their Present, London: John W. Parker
12. ^ a b c d e f g Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins